10 Best Famous Millers Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Millers poems. This is a select list of the best famous Millers poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Millers poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of millers poems.

• All Famous Millers Poems

 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,
That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he's 
Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug's attenuated
Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit
Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist's
Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you'd call
Companionable. But everything is getting choked to the point of
Silence. Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky
Over the Fudds' garage, reducing it--drastically--
To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on
A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is
Loathing. I don't want to go back inside any more. You meet
Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no,
Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings,
The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of 
happy-go-nutty
Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little
White cardboard castle over the mill run. "Up
The lazy river, how happy we could be?"
How will it end? That geranium glow
Over Anaheim's had the riot act read to it by the
Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into
A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner
(Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts
The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis
Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight 
micturition spree
On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little
Sleezix) on a lamé barge "borrowed" from Ollie
Of the Movies' dread mistress of the robes. Wait!
I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering, 
Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles
And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore) 
leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled
Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is 
About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have
Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live
Which is like thinking in another language. Everything
Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me.
That this is a fabulation, and that those "other times"
Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in 
Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should.
Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them
We live in one dimension, they in ours. While I
Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its 
Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions
At each new parting of the ways. Pastel
Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals.
"It's all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing
Stands alone. What happened to creative evolution?"
Sighed Aglavaine. Then to her Sélysette: "If his
Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others, 
What's keeping us here? Why not leave at once?
I have to stay here while they sit in there,
Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day
One lay under the tough green leaves,
Pretending not to notice how they bled into
The sky's aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed
Not to concern us. And so we too
Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance,
Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically
Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then
Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spirited 
Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark.
It's not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness
Of the finished product. True, to ask less were folly, yet
If he is the result of himself, how much the better 
For him we ought to be! And how little, finally, 
We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin
Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our 
Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this,
Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves
Has been applauded in London and St. Petersburg. Somewhere
Ravens pray for us." The storm finished brewing. And thus
She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none
She found who ever heard of Amadis,
Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love. Some
They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all
By definition is completeness (so
In utter darkness they reasoned), why not
Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when
Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal
A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps
The pattern that may carry the sense, but
Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination. 
Not what we see but how we see it matters; all's
Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces
The change as we would greet the change itself. 
All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny
Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the 
Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage
Shrouds our sense of it. Therefore bivouac we 
On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by
Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is
Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up
Over the horizon like a boy
On a fishing expedition. No one really knows
Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts
Were vouchsafed--once--but to be ambling on's
The tradition more than the safekeeping of it. This mulch for
Play keeps them interested and busy while the big,
Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants--what maps, what
Model cities, how much waste space. Life, our
Life anyway, is between. We don't mind 
Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot
One, but have our earnest where it chances on us, 
Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more,
Always invoking the echo, a summer's day.

 Farewell to the bushy clump close to the river
And the flags where the butter-bump hides in forever;
Farewell to the weedy nook, hemmed in by waters;
Farewell to the miller's brook and his three bonny daughters;
Farewell to them all while in prison I lie—
In the prison a thrall sees naught but the sky.

Shut out are the green fields and birds in the bushes;
In the prison yard nothing builds, blackbirds or thrushes.
Farewell to the old mill and dash of waters,
To the miller and, dearer still, to his three bonny daughters.

In the nook, the larger burdock grows near the green willow;
In the flood, round the moor-cock dashes under the billow;
To the old mill farewell, to the lock, pens, and waters,
To the miller himsel', and his three bonny daughters.

 Near the village of Udorf, on the banks of the Rhine,
There lived a miller and his family, once on a time;
And there yet stands the mill in a state of decay,
And concerning the miller and his family, attend to my lay. 

The miller and his family went to Church one Sunday morn,
Leaving behind their darling child, the youngest born,
In charge of brave Hanchen, the servant maid,
A kind-hearted girl and not the least afraid. 

As Hanchen was engaged preparing dinner for the family
She chanced to turn round, and there she did see
Heinrich Bottler, her lover, and she sincerely loved him,
Then she instantly got him something to eat and bade him begin. 

And in the midst of her business she sat down beside him,
While he did justice to the meat and thought it no sin,
But while he was eating he let fall his knife,
Then he commanded Hanchen to pick it up or else he'd take her life. 

Then as she stooped down to pick up the knife,
The villain caught her by the throat, and swore he'd take her life,
Then he drew a dagger from under his coat,
Crying, tell me where your master's money is, or I'll cut your throat. 

And still he threatened to kill her with the dagger in his hand,
If the poor girl didn't comply with his demand,
While in his choking grasp her breath was fleeting faster and faster,
Therefore she had no other choice but to die or betray her master. 

Then she cried, mercy, for Heaven's sake let go thy hold.
And I'll tell thee where my master keeps his gold;
Then he let go his hold without delay,
And she unto him thus boldly did say. 

Here, take this axe and use it, while I run upstairs,
To gather all my money, besides all my wares,
Because I'm resolved to fly along with you,
When you've robbed my master of his gold and bid France adieu. 

Then deceived by her plan he allowed her to leave the room,
Telling her to make haste and come back very soon,
Then to her master's bedroom she led the way,
And showed him the coffer where her master's money lay 

Then Heinrich with the axe broke the coffer very soon,
While Hanchen instead of going upstairs to her room,
Bolted all the doors upon him without dismay,
While Heinrich was busy preparing to carry her master's money away. 

Then she rushed to the mill to give the alarm,
Resolved to protect her master's money, while she could wield an arm;
And the only being in sight was her master's boy of five years old,
Then she cried, run! run! and tell father there's a robber taking his gold. 

Then the boy did as she bid him without any doubt,
And set off, running on the road she pointed out;
But at this moment, a shrill whistle made her stand aghast,
When she heard Heinrich, crying, catch that child that's running so fast. 

But still the boy ran on with might and main,
Until a ruffian sprang up from the bed of a natural drain;
And snatching the boy in his arms, and hastening towards the mill,
While brave Hanchen was afraid the boy would he kill. 

Then the villain came rushing with the boy towards the mill,
Crying, open the door, or the child I'll kill;
But she cried, never will I open the door to thee,
No! I will put my trust in God, and He'll save the child and me. 

Then the ruffian set down the child, for a moment to look about,
Crying, open the door, or I'll fire the mill without doubt;
And while searching for combustibles, he discovered an inlet to the mill,
Saying, my pretty maid, once I get in, it's you I will kill. 

Then he tied the hands and feet of the poor child,
Which caused it to scream with fear, very wild;
Then he stole back to the aperture to effect an entrance,
And when Hanchen saw him, she said now is my chance. 

So the ruffian got safely in the great drum wheel,
Then Hanchen set on the engine, which made the ruffian reel;
And as he was whirled about, he screamed aloud,
And when Hanchen saw him like a rat in a trap, she felt very proud. 

At length the master arrived and his family,
And when she heard his kindly voice her heart was full of glee,
Then she opened the mill door and let him in,
While her eyes with tears of joy were full to the brim. 

Then the master set off the engine without delay,
And the ruffian was dragged forth while he shook with dismay,
And Heinrich and he were bound together under a strong escort,
And conveyed to Bonn Prison where villains resort. 

So thus ends the story of Hanchen, a heroine brave,
That tried hard her master's gold to save,
And for her bravery she got married to the miller's eldest son,
And Hanchen on her marriage night cried Heaven's will be done.

 Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
The water at the mill
Sounds more hoarse and dull.
The miller's daughter walking by
With frozen fingers soldered to her basket
Seems to be knocking 
Upon a hundred leagues of floor
With her light heels, and mocking
Percy and Douglas dead,
And Bruce on his burial bed,
Where he lies white as may
With wars and leprosy,
And all the kings before
This land was kingless,
And all the singers before
This land was songless,
This land that with its dead and living waits the Judgement Day.
But they, the powerless dead,
Listening can hear no more
Than a hard tapping on the floor
A little overhead
Of common heels that do not know
Whence they come or where they go
And are content
With their poor frozen life and shallow banishment.

 I

Because the night was falling warm and still 
Upon a golden day at April’s end, 
I thought; I will go up the hill once more 
To find the face of him that I have lost, 
And speak with him before his ghost has flown
Far from the earth that might not keep him long. 

So down the road I went, pausing to see 
How slow the dusk drew on, and how the folk 
Loitered about their doorways, well-content 
With the fine weather and the waxing year.
The miller’s house, that glimmered with grey walls, 
Turned me aside; and for a while I leaned 
Along the tottering rail beside the bridge 
To watch the dripping mill-wheel green with damp. 
The miller peered at me with shadowed eyes
And pallid face: I could not hear his voice 
For sound of the weir’s plunging. He was old. 
His days went round with the unhurrying wheel. 

Moving along the street, each side I saw 
The humble, kindly folk in lamp-lit rooms;
Children at table; simple, homely wives; 
Strong, grizzled men; and soldiers back from war, 
Scaring the gaping elders with loud talk. 

Soon all the jumbled roofs were down the hill, 
And I was turning up the grassy lane
That goes to the big, empty house that stands 
Above the town, half-hid by towering trees. 
I looked below and saw the glinting lights: 
I heard the treble cries of bustling life, 
And mirth, and scolding; and the grind of wheels.
An engine whistled, piercing-shrill, and called 
High echoes from the sombre slopes afar; 
Then a long line of trucks began to move. 

It was quite still; the columned chestnuts stood 
Dark in their noble canopies of leaves.
I thought: ‘A little longer I’ll delay, 
And then he’ll be more glad to hear my feet, 
And with low laughter ask me why I’m late. 
The place will be too dim to show his eyes, 
But he will loom above me like a tree,
With lifted arms and body tall and strong.’ 

There stood the empty house; a ghostly hulk 
Becalmed and huge, massed in the mantling dark, 
As builders left it when quick-shattering war 
Leapt upon France and called her men to fight. 
Lightly along the terraces I trod, 
Crunching the rubble till I found the door 
That gaped in twilight, framing inward gloom. 
An owl flew out from under the high eaves 
To vanish secretly among the firs,
Where lofty boughs netted the gleam of stars. 
I stumbled in; the dusty floors were strewn 
With cumbering piles of planks and props and beams; 
Tall windows gapped the walls; the place was free 
To every searching gust and jousting gale;
But now they slept; I was afraid to speak, 
And heavily the shadows crowded in. 

I called him, once; then listened: nothing moved: 
Only my thumping heart beat out the time. 
Whispering his name, I groped from room to room. 

Quite empty was that house; it could not hold 
His human ghost, remembered in the love 
That strove in vain to be companioned still. 

II

Blindly I sought the woods that I had known 
So beautiful with morning when I came 
Amazed with spring that wove the hazel twigs 
With misty raiment of awakening green. 
I found a holy dimness, and the peace 
Of sanctuary, austerely built of trees, 
And wonder stooping from the tranquil sky. 

Ah! but there was no need to call his name. 
He was beside me now, as swift as light. 
I knew him crushed to earth in scentless flowers, 
And lifted in the rapture of dark pines. 
‘For now,’ he said, ‘my spirit has more eyes
Than heaven has stars; and they are lit by love. 
My body is the magic of the world, 
And dawn and sunset flame with my spilt blood. 
My breath is the great wind, and I am filled 
With molten power and surge of the bright waves 
That chant my doom along the ocean’s edge. 

‘Look in the faces of the flowers and find 
The innocence that shrives me; stoop to the stream 
That you may share the wisdom of my peace. 
For talking water travels undismayed. 
The luminous willows lean to it with tales 
Of the young earth; and swallows dip their wings 
Where showering hawthorn strews the lanes of light. 

‘I can remember summer in one thought 
Of wind-swept green, and deeps of melting blue, 
And scent of limes in bloom; and I can hear 
Distinct the early mower in the grass, 
Whetting his blade along some morn of June. 

‘For I was born to the round world’s delight, 
And knowledge of enfolding motherhood,
Whose tenderness, that shines through constant toil, 
Gathers the naked children to her knees. 
In death I can remember how she came 
To kiss me while I slept; still I can share 
The glee of childhood; and the fleeting gloom 
When all my flowers were washed with rain of tears. 

‘I triumph in the choruses of birds, 
Bursting like April buds in gyres of song. 
My meditations are the blaze of noon 
On silent woods, where glory burns the leaves.
I have shared breathless vigils; I have slaked 
The thirst of my desires in bounteous rain 
Pouring and splashing downward through the dark. 
Loud storm has roused me with its winking glare, 
And voice of doom that crackles overhead. 
I have been tired and watchful, craving rest, 
Till the slow-footed hours have touched my brows 
And laid me on the breast of sundering sleep.’ 

III

I know that he is lost among the stars, 
And may return no more but in their light. 
Though his hushed voice may call me in the stir 
Of whispering trees, I shall not understand. 
Men may not speak with stillness; and the joy 
Of brooks that leap and tumble down green hills 
Is faster than their feet; and all their thoughts 
Can win no meaning from the talk of birds. 

My heart is fooled with fancies, being wise; 
For fancy is the gleaming of wet flowers 
When the hid sun looks forth with golden stare. 
Thus, when I find new loveliness to praise,
And things long-known shine out in sudden grace, 
Then will I think: ‘He moves before me now.’ 
So he will never come but in delight, 
And, as it was in life, his name shall be 
Wonder awaking in a summer dawn,
And youth, that dying, touched my lips to song.

 A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth -
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight? -
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth? -
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue prunella every child's delight.
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
(Make we no thesis of the miller's plight.)
What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?

IT is the miller's daughter, 
And she is grown so dear, so dear, 
That I would be the jewel 
That trembles in her ear: 
For hid in ringlets day and night, 5 
I'd touch her neck so warm and white. 

And I would be the girdle 
About her dainty dainty waist, 
And her heart would beat against me, 
In sorrow and in rest: 10 
And I should know if it beat right, 
I'd clasp it round so close and tight. 

And I would be the necklace, 
And all day long to fall and rise 
Upon her balmy bosom, 15 
With her laughter or her sighs: 
And I would lie so light, so light, 
I scarce should be unclasp'd at night. 

 AFTER these vernal rains

That we so warmly sought,
Dear wife, see how our plains

With blessings sweet are fraught!
We cast our distant gaze

Far in the misty blue;
Here gentle love still strays,

Here dwells still rapture true.

Thou seest whither go

Yon pair of pigeons white,
Where swelling violets blow

Round sunny foliage bright.
'Twas there we gather'd first

A nosegay as we roved;
There into flame first burst

The passion that we proved.

Yet when, with plighted troth,

The priest beheld us fare
Home from the altar both,

With many a youthful pair,--
Then other moons had birth,

And many a beauteous sun,
Then we had gain'd the earth

Whereon life's race to run.

A hundred thousand fold

The mighty bond was seal'd;
In woods, on mountains cold,

In bushes, in the field,
Within the wall, in caves,

And on the craggy height,
And love, e'en o'er the waves,

Bore in his tube the light.

Contented we remain'd,

We deem'd ourselves a pair;
'Twas otherwise ordain'd,

For, lo! a third was there;
A fourth, fifth, sixth appear'd,

And sat around our board;
And now the plants we've rear'd

High o'er our heads have soar'd!

How fair and pleasant looks,

On yonder beauteous spot,
Embraced by poplar-brooks,

The newly-finish'd cot!
Who is it there that sits

In that glad home above?
Is't not our darling Fritz

With his own darling love?

Beside yon precipice,

Whence pent-up waters steal,
And leaving the abyss,

Fall foaming through the wheel,
Though people often tell

Of millers' wives so fair,
Yet none can e'er excel

Our dearest daughter there!

Yet where the thick-set green

Stands round yon church and sad,
Where the old fir-tree's seen

Alone tow'rd heaven to nod,--
'Tis there the ashes lie

Of our untimely dead;
From earth our gaze on high

By their blest memory's led.

See how yon hill is bright

With billowy-waving arms!
The force returns, whose might

Has vanquished war's alarms.
Who proudly hastens here

With wreath-encircled brow?
'Tis like our child so dear

Thus Charles comes homeward now.

That dearest honour'd guest

Is welcom'd by the bride;
She makes the true one blest,

At the glad festal tide.
And ev'ry one makes haste

To join the dance with glee;
While thou with wreaths hast graced

The youngest children three.

To sound of flute and horn

The time appears renew'd,
When we, in love's young morn,

In the glad dance upstood;
And perfect bliss I know

Ere the year's course is run,
For to the font we go

With grandson and with son!

1803.*

On the far hill the cloud of thunder grew
And sunlight blurred below; but sultry blue
Burned yet on the valley water where it hoards
Behind the miller's elmen floodgate boards,
And there the wasps, that lodge them ill-concealed
In the vole's empty house, still drove afield
To plunder touchwood from old crippled trees
And build their young ones their hutched nurseries;
Still creaked the grasshoppers' rasping unison
Nor had the whisper through the tansies run
Nor weather-wisest bird gone home.
             How then
Should wry eels in the pebbled shallows ken
Lightning coming? troubled up they stole
To the deep-shadowed sullen water-hole,
Among whose warty snags the quaint perch lair.
As cunning stole the boy to angle there,
Muffling least tread, with no noise balancing through
The hangdog alder-boughs his bright bamboo.
Down plumbed the shuttled ledger, and the quill
On the quicksilver water lay dead still.

A sharp snatch, swirling to-fro of the line,
He's lost, he's won, with splash and scuffling shine
Past the low-lapping brandy-flowers drawn in,
The ogling hunchback perch with needled fin.
And there beside him one as large as he,
Following his hooked mate, careless who shall see
Or what befall him, close and closer yet —
The startled boy might take him in his net
That folds the other.
Slow, while on the clay,
The other flounces, slow he sinks away.
What agony usurps that watery brain
For comradeship of twenty summers slain,
For such delights below the flashing weir
And up the sluice-cut, playing buccaneer
Among the minnows; lolling in hot sun
When bathing vagabonds had drest and done;
Rootling in salty flannel-weed for meal
And river shrimps, when hushed the trundling wheel;
Snapping the dapping moth, and with new wonder
Prowling through old drowned barges falling asunder.
And O a thousand things the whole year through
They did together, never more to do.

 A freaking ankle crabbed his blissful trips,
this whiskey tastes like California
but is Kentucky,
like Berkeley where he truly worked at it
but nothing broke all night-”no fires-”one dawn,
crowding his luck,

flowed down along the cliffs to the Big Sur
where Henry Miller's box is vomit-green
and Henry bathed in sulphur
lovely, hot, over the sea, like Senator
Cat, relaxed & sober, watery
as Tivoli, sir.

No Christmas jaunts for fractured cats. Hot dog,
the world is places where he will not go
this wintertide or again.
Does Striding Edge block wild the sky as then
when Henry with his mystery was two
& twenty, high on the hog?